Featured in The power puzzle – 06 – 2026

Solar skills shortage intensifies

Solar plays an outsized role in skills and employment, as the largest growing employer in the energy sector worldwide. pv magazine looks at an investigative report into a European skills provider and digs further into the challenges of training workers for the solar industry.

By

Carrie Hampel

26 Jun 2026

The RES Training Centre in Albacete, Spain, achieved Global Wind Organisation (GWO) Solar certification on Dec. 19, 2025, covering GWO Solar Safety Training (S-ST) and GWO Solar Technical Training (S-TT) developed specifically for the growing solar operations and maintenance workforce. The ‘Merit Form’ method allows experienced technicians to have existing competence formally recognized and mapped against GWO standards, without requiring full retraining from scratch. | Image: RES Group

Solar plays an outsized role in skills and employment, as the largest growing employer in the energy sector worldwide. pv magazine looks at an investigative report into a European skills provider and digs further into the challenges of training workers for the solar industry. In December 2024, pv magazine reported that 800,000 workers needed to …

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